Bill Kaulitz this week at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Berlin.
The better place to go out, as he says
Source: Bastian Thiery
He wears pink that day, a Liberace-style pajama tuxedo by Kilian Kerner, a Berlin designer.
A cut to the belly button reveals a few deciliters of tattoo ink on his bare chest.
Bill Kaulitz actually lives in Los Angeles.
For a few months he has been camping with twin brother Tom, sister-in-law Heidi Klum, who is in front of the camera in Berlin for her TV show “Germany's Next Top Model”, and her children in the “Soho House” members' club.
For his book presentation he receives in a hotel suite in the “Waldorf Astoria” - with a majestic safety distance.
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ICONIST:
Mr. Kaulitz, how does the Broken English of the Soho House employees sound through the mask?
Bill Kaulitz:
Yeah ... it doesn't bother me that much, but of course the ceiling is slowly falling on our heads.
You live nice, but of course Berlin is just like the USA.
Lockdown has been in LA since March, so the silence is just as oppressive.
Everything nailed up, even big chains like Pizza Hut are broke.
"For Sale" signs everywhere.
Hardly anyone who lives there was born in LA, many have now gone to their hometowns.
It's dead. At home, in your bladder, your pool sparkles and your palm beckons, but when you drive down into town, on Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard - no tourists, no Batman handing out autographs.
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ICONIST:
No more splashing around in the Playboy Mansion.
You were once a guest at Hugh Hefner's.
How was it like that?
Kaulitz:
Mega, but also bizarre.
Especially when I met Britney Spears there.
For me as a 90s kid, she's an icon.
She stood next to her manager, totally drunk, and held out a limp, wet hand to me that didn't even grab hold of it.
I still thought it was great.
Britney doesn't talk to anyone.
I'm afraid she was completely too medicated.
I don't want to meet my role models anymore.
I'm also always afraid of meeting fans.
You can only disappoint them.
ICONIST:
You have
your
own fashion label, "Magdeburg - Los Angeles".
The name also contains the contradiction of two worlds.
How do you see one world like the other?
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Kaulitz:
For me LA is absolute freedom, also because of course I was and am much less known there.
I came over there as a bird of paradise, no pig knew what I was doing, but everyone welcomed me with open arms.
I immediately thought, oh, they're all nice here.
Many consider this friendliness to be artificial and superficial.
But I'd rather have a polite, superficial person in front of me than an asshole.
Would like to expand his fashion label "Magdeburg - LosAngeles" and also have stores at some point: Bill Kaulitz
Source: picture alliance / dpa / dpa-Zentralbild
ICONIST:
When you come to LA as a German celebrity and nobody recognizes you anymore, is that really that
awesome
?
Kaulitz:
I thought it was great, especially to be able to suddenly look people in the face instead of just staring at the floor in a dismissive manner.
You can feel very lonely in LA. There is also no wild party life like here.
At two o'clock sharp, the clearance lights go on, then no more drinks will be served, even if Jay-Z and Beyoncé are sitting there.
I was lucky enough to get there with Tom.
In 2010, after the hype at home became so absurd and our house had been broken into, we packed everyone up, mom, stepdad, five dogs.
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ICONIST:
How far are you with your Frank Lloyd Wright house?
Kaulitz:
I've already moved in with my own recording studio.
It's in the hills five minutes from Sunset.
Downstairs, in the Chateau Marmont, I can have the best parties.
But up there with me I am like alone on my mountain, with Mountain Lions and coyotes, real wilderness.
I don't even see or know my neighbors.
I don't leave my house big.
At 9 a.m. I get up, make my celery juice, get dressed properly.
Jogging suit, elastic band makes me lazy.
I need poise, a tight cuff.
And then I sit at the computer first, answering emails and calls, which I hate.
ICONIST: To be
famous is today's opium.
What does it actually cost to be a star?
How much do you have to get together every month to even be able to afford such a life?
Kaulitz:
First and foremost, success means a lot, a lot of work.
Of course you also need a huge number of employees.
I don't want to put any money out of here.
Let's put it this way: The monthly costs I have to pay for the band, my fashion label, business managers, tax consultants, lawyers, my house, my life, devour the salary of a bank executive.
It is not easy as an entrepreneur and especially as an artist at this time.
We had to cancel our Latin America tour, shut down our ticketing company, lay off five people.
Until one o'clock every day I am busy with organizational stuff.
Then I go hiking, dedicate myself to creative work, to music.
In the evening I watch movies with my bulldog.
An astrologer told me that films are very, very important to me.
That sounds crazy LA-stupid now, but I need films like therapy.
ICONIST:
Films as therapy -
against what
?
Kaulitz:
My social damage.
For years, whether at home, in cars, airplanes or even on stage, I lived like in a space capsule.
Securities picked me up, drove me somewhere.
I haven't spoken to anyone except the band and family.
When people approached me directly, outside of an interview or job, I was completely insecure.
I didn't even order my own food. I was a social affair.
I was broken.
Watching films helps me switch off and learn to stay in the now.
ICONIST:
You are now 31, on February 1st your biography “Career Suicide” will be published by Ullstein Verlag.
You can be seen on the cover with a bleeding gunshot wound between your brows.
Why?
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Kaulitz:
As a symbol of my career suicide.
There were moments when I was so exhausted that I thought if my car crashed into a wall or I crashed in the plane, I would be relieved of all burdens.
Not that I've ever had a death wish.
It was sheer exhaustion.
I just wanted to close the door and be quiet.
ICONIST:
There are people who would give their arm for a number 1 hit and gig.
And then you always hear stars complain that everything is really terrible, as if they had been kidnapped on such a planet "success".
Kaulitz:
That's right, and I hate that too.
Of course I love what I do and I worked my ass off for my career.
Artists are artists because they draw from the swamp.
Likes to provoke with his appearance: Bill Kaulitz, 2010
Source: picture alliance / dpa
ICONIST:
Four guys from Magdeburg were the most successful German rock band in 2005: Your brother Tom was the guitarist with the matted hair sausages, you the singer with the black ballet girl eyes, the heavy skull jewelry on the body that was much too thin and that pineapple hairstyle.
Kaulitz:
The 80ies palm!
The classic, also for women, colored burgundy ... David Bowie had the same hairstyle in strawberry blonde in the film "The Journey into the Labyrinth".
ICONIST:
You looked
very
anorexic with a hip circumference of less than 30 centimeters.
Kaulitz: But
I never was.
Tom and I were just always thin.
Tom just wore baggy clothes that hid it, and at one point he popped the shakes in to make him gain weight.
Only Lagerfeld pants fit me.
Those were the only skinny jeans that didn't look baggy on me.
ICONIST:
With your androgynous look, you became a pop icon, but also teased and hated for your eccentric demeanor.
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Kaulitz:
Even before Tokio Hotel we were the freaks who didn't fit into the picture.
We lived in Loitsche at that time, north of Magdeburg.
In the morning at the bus stop near our parents' house, we were attacked and threatened.
All layers of life squeezed into the bus: children in homes, nerds, special school students, Asis, foreigners, neo-Nazis, leftists.
It was a dangerous mix.
Then Tom came with his dreadlocks and his "Nazis out" T-shirt and I with my hair, painted nails.
Our looks screamed to get hit in the face.
Every day it was like going to war.
Then when we got famous, the whole bus stop was kicked in by radicals.
I was terrified, also for our parents.
There were “kill bill” T-shirts, death threats and police operations before every concert.
The securities always had to go ahead and pull people out with knives.
When I look at Heidi's kids today, who are the same age as we were back then, I only realize how young we were.
And we were pelted with stones by adults!
ICONIST:
How do you explain the hatred?
Kaulitz:
I think it was also extreme envy of our success at a young age.
In Germany it's always a money thing too.
How much do they earn, why do they have so much money?
Then our different looks.
We simply pushed people's tolerance button extremely hard and many weren't ready for it.
Of course, I also liked to provoke with my looks.
I knew about my effect, whether on young people, old people, or even daddies.
And have pushed the boundaries between man and woman to the max.
At some point I almost did a drag with glued eyelashes and glued hair.
It had nothing to do with Bill getting out of bed in the morning.
But that really appealed to me.
This is what winners look like: Tokio Hotel with the Golden Tuning Fork 2007 in Ludwigshafen
Source: picture alliance / Eventpress
ICONIST:
Your band has been compared to the early Beatles.
At some point, people came to your concerts to scream and not to hear the music.
Kaulitz:
Our music seemed to be fucking irrelevant.
We could have sung “Alle mein Duckchen” and the people would have come.
It was so frustrating at one point.
They said we were doing teen music.
It was even said that we weren't a real band at all, that everything was just cast.
Anyway, that's over.
Today, Billie Eilish is the modern day emo.
A girl with green hair and teenage depressed thoughts.
But because she comes from America, adults in Germany also dare to listen to her music.
I think this being a fan, this hype, is over anyway.
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The kids today hear a song for 15 seconds, they think it's great, but the interpreter doesn't give a shit.
You don't even know what his name is.
They don't have any star posters on the walls either.
It used to be a way of life.
There you heard Tokio Hotel, you
only
heard Tokio Hotel and dressed in the same way.
Slept in front of concert halls to be close as a family to your idol.
Today there is Spotify and Instagram.
Everyone can see that Bill is at the Waldorf Astoria right now.
So why travel there? I can see it on my smartphone, even more privately.
ICONIST:
You were born in Leipzig shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, you have not lived
through
the GDR.
Nevertheless, Magdeburg was important.
Kaulitz:
It was our home after our parents separated.
In 1996 we moved to grandma and grandpa in a settlement, gray rough plaster blocks in which impoverished pensioners and the socially disadvantaged vegetated grimly to themselves.
Our family felt like the losers on the turnaround.
The view of the people there was: The "fucking Wessis" ruined everything.
ICONIST:
Your book describes your life, not
the
life in the East at the time.
While reading, one might think that sex and DIY were the only pastimes.
Kaulitz:
We have been confronted a lot with sex.
There was nothing else to do but fumble and try drugs, smoke and drink.
And Aunt Rosi around the corner had just sold the alcohol, you weren't checked.
The kids drove off and got the beer.
It was even more relaxed in the country than in the city.
ICONIST:
You write that your mother believed that the soul of her daughter, who had aborted her, continued to live in you, and that is why you became so special, unlike other boys.
Kaulitz:
She still believes that today.
I always thought that was very sweet and I'm grateful that she always let me be who I am.
To let your son run around the quarry pond in a bathing suit, that already had balls!
Her parenting practices were cool anyway: if we wanted Coke, she said: Okay, but then you'll have to live with getting black feet.
When it came to cigarettes, she said: Fine, smoke!
Then your organs stop growing and you remain small forever.
Including your little Schniedelmann.
Then you'll never get a wife.
So she tried to keep us away from things.
ICONIST:
Your identical twin brother, Tom, was born ten minutes before you.
Does that play a role, like being the eternal second on a moon landing?
Kaulitz:
Nope.
Tom always says the other way around: Without me he would be a car mechanic today.
We are not synchronized swimmers either.
I was the mom-child and always unfolded my doll's miniature ironing board next to hers.
Tom made construction workers.
He was rather embarrassed about being different.
ICONIST:
Tom and you, it was already a couple relationship, styled the same as children.
Suddenly the other is somewhere else.
How is it when the twin brother you're so close with suddenly has his own family?
How does it feel to be single, or are you not single at all and maybe just don't want to talk about it?
Kaulitz:
Yes, I'm single.
I know that many think: Oh God, what is the brother running with you all the time?
Can't he even leave them alone!
I can reassure you that there are actually moments when I'm not there either.
Of course, Heidi got to know us together because we always come in pairs.
She says herself that she actually married two men.
But that's exactly why it works.
Tom and I are so connected that a partner who does not integrate the other would never be considered.
Like to swap shoes and clothes: Tom Kaulitz's wife Heidi Klum and twin brother Bill (r.)
Source: picture alliance / Photoshot
A serious relationship with one of us can only work if we include the other and accept them as well.
This certainly does not apply to every pair of twins, but it is the case with us.
Tom and I always lived together until three years ago.
For the first time I am now living alone.
A situation that I first had to learn to deal with in order to be able to give in and say, okay, I'll let him live his life too.
I let go of you so that you can be husband and stepfather too.
ICONIST:
Your relationship
life has
always been such a secret.
Kaulitz:
But not because I wanted to hide.
I was also not allowed to comment on it.
Both my bandmates and our team were of the opinion that this shouldn't be an issue.
ICONIST:
The star must always flicker alone in the
sky
.
Kaulitz:
Bill had to be the single, he had to sacrifice himself.
In a boy band, not all four boys can be taken.
There have been relationships in my life, of course.
They just weren't so happy.
I have the problem that I like broken people.
My last one ran for two and a half years.
That was five years ago.
Broke my heart
The man is married to a woman today.
There are some guys who live such a double life because they want children or because they are under pressure from the family, as was the case with my boyfriend.
It also had to do with his beliefs, our relationship was a real problem for him, which totally shocked me.
Fortunately, I never had to think about how do I explain this to my mom now?
Whether a buddy slept in my room or I had a love triangle with a girl and a boy, that was all okay.
ICONIST:
What does love mean to you?
Kaulitz:
Tom once said this sentence that he doesn't need a relationship at all in his life, he has one with me.
He just needs sex.
Two days later he met Heidi, and after six months he was engaged.
That's what I find so strong about love: We don't know who is about to come through the door.
ICONIST:
Sex?
Kaulitz:
Just having sex makes me sad, then you just feel lonely.
I want to get married, children.
With the right partner - with great pleasure.
I just can't imagine being single daddy.
I doubt whether marriage is in my cards in this life.
ICONIST:
Then you have
come to terms
with yourself?
Kaulitz:
I'm on my way to see myself.
Sometimes I am overcome by fears.
If you come from below like we do, you know too well what it would mean to lose everything you have worked for.
No one in our family has ever had a career or had any money.
That is the responsibility Tom and I assumed very early on.
Shovel, shovel, shovel to get out of our hole.
And you never put this shovel down.
If I was born in Beverly Hills with a drink in hand by the pool, I probably would never have made this career.
My whole drive in life came from the fact that I didn't want to stay in Loitsche.
ICONIST:
Finally, the most pressing question:
Are you
planning a musical duet with Heidi?
Kaulitz:
Heidi is always happy to sing.
But she doesn't dream of a singing career.
But we can exchange shoes!
We are the same size.
We share a passion for huge wardrobes that are filled with the hottest clothes!
What is in Bill Kaulitz's wardrobe
Sometimes punk, sometimes drag, sometimes dandy or circus director: Bill Kaulitz is a fictional character - and at the same time completely authentic.
Mira Wiesinger visited the Tokio Hotel front man in his apartment in Berlin.
Source: N24
To person:
Bill Kaulitz, musician and model:
Born in Leipzig in 1989, he became known as the lead singer of Tokio Hotel - four Magdeburgers, Bill's twin brother Tom is the guitarist who made their breakthrough in 2005 (“Durch den Monsun”).
In addition to his musician career, he models, is a voice actor, TV juror and designer.
Kaulitz has lived in LA since 2010
Bill Kaulitz: "Career Suicide: My First Thirty Years" (Ullstein)
Source: Ullstein
Source: Welt am Sonntag
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